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Black Friday: Death in Department Stores By Aubrey Nye Hamilton

Department Stores: perfect for murder, and Aubrey Nye Hamilton's Death in Department Stores is the perfect article to post for Black Friday. Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving when millions of people in the U.S. start their holiday shopping. Aubrey Nye Hamilton's Death in Department Stores appeared in Mystery Readers Journal: Retail Sales (41:2) Summer 2025. 

Death in Department Stores by Aubrey Nye Hamilton 

The History of Retail: a Timeline by Matt Portnoy, https://metrobi.com/blog/the-history-of-retail-a-timeline/, states that initially the exchange of goods was a barter system since currency did not exist. Once a universal currency was established, trade commenced in the form of bazaars and marketplaces, where goods and buyers met in a central location. Then sellers became itinerant, seeking out their customers. When trade routes became more well-known, merchants set up storefronts near the river ports and train stops where their goods arrived, and the buyers had to come to the seller. These vendors focused on a narrow range of products, creating the requirement for multiple stores to meet a growing community’s demands.

The introduction of the department store, where many kinds of merchandise are sold under one roof, was revolutionary. The first department store, Bon Marché, opened in Paris in 1838, pioneering the concept of fixed-price shopping. Macy’s was founded in 1858. Others soon followed. The department store catered to the emerging middle class, which had more leisure and money than earlier generations due to the economic impacts of industrialization. The department store became the equivalent of the marketplace of ancient times, where people met to shop, eat, and socialize. And as the following list of crime fiction titles shows, they also came to kill.

One of the earliest instances of fictional murder in a department store is The French Powder Mystery(Frederick A. Stokes, 1930), the second Ellery Queen mystery. A model demonstrating furniture in the display window pushes a button to unfold the bed and the murdered body of the owner’s wife falls out. The case comes to Inspector Richard Queen of the New York Homicide Department and his son Ellery Queen. 

Killers seem to be fond of the large plate glass display windows in department stores. Inspector Devenish of Scotland Yard encounters one in The Shop Window Murders (Collins, 1930) by Vernon Loder. Both the owner and a shop assistant are found murdered in the display window of Mander’s Stores, the newest department store to grace Oxford Street in London.

Murder in the French Room (Mystery League, 1931) by Joan Hultman is set in a Midwestern department store near the Indiana-Ohio border. A customer is found dead in the designer clothing section of the store and the detective in charge tries to trace everyone who was in the vicinity on a busy Saturday. 

Dead Man Inside (Doubleday, Doran & Company Crime Club, 1931) by Vincent Sterrett is the second book about amateur sleuth Walter Ghost. Chicago haberdashery clerk Rufus Ker finds a sign on the door to Bluefield, Inc. that says “Dead Man Inside”. Once inside Ker realizes the mannequin in the window is the body of the store owner Amos Bluefield. Ghost, who is in Chicago for business, becomes involved in the investigation.

The Case of the Shoplifter’s Shoe (William Morrow, 1938) by Erle Stanley Gardener starts with Perry Mason and Della Street entering a department store to avoid a sudden rainfall. After lunch they see an elderly lady being accused of shoplifting by the store detectives and Mason intervenes. Of course murder soon ensues.

Zelda Popkin wrote five books about investigator Mary Carner beginning in 1938. Carner was on the security staff in a large department store in New York City and a forerunner of the female detectives of the late 20^thcentury.

Minna Bardon used her advertising agency experience to describe murder in the back office of a large department store in the Midwest during its annual store-wide sale. The Case of the Advertised Murders was first published in 1939 by Hillman-Curl.

In Death Demands an Audience (Doubleday Crime Club, 1940) by Helen Reilly, the 10^th of her 31-book series about Inspector Christopher McKee of New York Police Homicide, the browsers along Fifth Avenue are used to seeing elaborate presentations in the windows of Garth & Campbell but not a bloody body in an evening dress. 

Another author with an advertising background Eleanore Kelly Sellars wrote a mystery surrounding the fashion show planned by an exclusive Fifth Avenue department store. Murder a la Mode seems to be her sole contribution to the genre. It won the Dodd, Mead Red Badge prize for best new mystery by a new author in 1941.

The Red Carnelian (Ziff-Davis, 1943) by Phyllis A. Whitney was originally published as Red Is for Murder. It is set in Cunningham’s, a gigantic Chicago department store. When store sign-writer Linell Wynn’s ex-boyfriend Michael Montgomery is found dead in a display window, she’s immediately a prime suspect. However, Montgomery had plenty of enemies. 

File for Record (W.W. Norton, 1943) by Alice Tilton was retired academic Leonidas Witherall’s sixth case. Deficient customer service at Haymaker's Department Store moves him to call on Mr. Haymaker to complain, only to find Haymaker stabbed with a samurai sword. Witherall enlists the assistance of an ill-assorted group to track down the murderer.

Stolen Goods (Harper, 1949) by Clarence Budington Kelland has advertising copywriter Sherry Madigan in Prothero’s, the colossal metropolitan department store, on the scene when a body is discovered in the fitting room. And she’s around when the next one is discovered so she takes an interest in investigating the crimes.

In Everybody Always Tells by E.R. Punshon (Gollancz, 1950) Bobby Owen of Scotland Yard and his wife Olive are busy bargain-hunting in a famous London department store. Olive discovers a necklace stuffed in her handbag which turns out to have been placed there by one Lord Newdagonby, whose stout denial of the act is swiftly followed by a fatal knife blow to a prominent scientist in a locked-room mystery. 

The Knife Behind You (Harper & Brothers, 1950) by James Benet is an inside look at the skullduggery of a large department store. California lawyer Allen Tinker works to save truck driver Bill Olmstead who was framed in the murder of Spargo, Rand Department Store’s detective. Another murder soon follows. 

Private investigator Carney Wilde is hired by a large department store in Philadelphia to discover who is stealing its merchandise in The Golden Door (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1951; Collins Crime Club, 1951), the fourth title in a series of seven by Bart Spicer.

Spencer Dean wrote nine books about Don Cadee, Chief of Store Protection at Ambletts, the high-end Fifth Avenue department store. They were published between 1954 and 1961, first by Washburn and then by Doubleday. Shoplifting, disappearing merchandise shipments, and murdered buyers are some of the crimes Cadee dealt with.

Death Department (John Long, 1959) by Bill Knox, the second Thane and Moss case, is set in a large Glasgow department store, where shoplifting is common. But when the losses increase sharply, the managing director decides the theft is organized and demands action from the police. Then the head buyer disappears and murder follows. 

“Evening Primrose” by John Collier is a much-reprinted short story about a poet who decides to live in a local department store. He discovers the department store is inhabited by a society of human-like individuals. It was first published in 1940, then in Presenting Moonshine (Viking Press, 1941) and again in Fancies and Goodnights (Doubleday, 1951; Bantam 1953). Adapted for radio three times and by Stephen Sondheim for the ninth episode of ABC Stage 67 which aired on November 16, 1966. 

Line Up for Murder by Marian Babson (Collins, 1980) describes Dorrie Wilson’s experience with the famous New Year's sale at Bonnard's department store which starts out great. But things begin to go south by the fourth day, and Dorrie realizes that something is rotten in the line for the Sale of the Century.

Murder in Store (Walker, 1989) by D.C. Brod is the first Quint McCauley book. Preston Hauser, owner of a famous department store, asks McCauley to investigate some threatening letters he received. Soon after Preston is poisoned and suspicion falls on Hauser’s wife, but McCauley quickly learns she’s not the only one to benefit from the millionaire’s death.

Death in Store by Jennifer Rowe (Allen & Unwin, 1993) is a collection of short stories about Australian researcher turned sleuth Verity Birdwood. The final story is a tale about Christmas in the Fredericks' department store, whose seasonal lavish decorations are famous. Verity Birdwood is assigned to gather information about Christmas in a big store for a TV program and instead investigates the murder of the store Santa Claus and his photographer. 

In The Steel Kiss (Grand Central Publishing, 2016) by Jeffrey Deaver, Amelia Sachs chases an anti-consumerist killer through a department store in Brooklyn when an escalator malfunctions. One man is badly injured and Sachs is forced to let her quarry escape as she helps the victim. Forensic detective Lincoln Rhyme is working on a civil case involving a wrongful death suit against an escalator manufacturer. They eventually find the two cases intersect.

In the sixth Junior Bender case Fields Where They Lay (Soho Crime, 2016) by Tim Hallinan, Junior has been hired to find a shoplifter but instead he finds a murder victim on the upper floor of an abandoned department store in a failing shopping mall. The fading shopping mall phenomenon is thoroughly explored while Junior finds a killer.

Psycho by the Sea (Raven Books, 2021) by Lynne Truss is the fourth Constable Twitten mystery. Constable Twitten, Sergeant Brunswick, and Inspector Steine of the 1950s Brighton police force deal with the death of a U.S. researcher in the music section of Gosling’s department store as well as a missing gang member and an escaped criminally violent prisoner.

The Devil’s Draper (Fly on the Wall Press, 2025) by Donna Moore is set in 1920s Glasgow. Three story lines include one about Beatrice Price, owner of an employment agency, who discovers that the young women she places in the drapery section of Hector Arrol and Sons department store are victimized by the owner. She goes undercover to investigate.  

Children’s fiction has not escaped the concept of crime in department stores. The Crimson Thread (Reilly & Lee, 1925) by Roy J. Snell is the fifth book in his “An Adventure Story for Girls” series. Lucile Tucker is working at the Marshall Fields in Chicago before Christmas in the book department. A best-selling author disappears, Lucile’s worn coat is taken and an expensive fur is left in its place, coworkers leave the store via the package chute, and other puzzles occupy Lucile’s attention. 

The Clue in Blue (Grossett & Dunlap, 1948) by Betsy Allen is the first of 12 books about Connie Blair. Connie models high-end clothes at Campion's in Philadelphia, where her aunt works. Expensive clothing disappears and then reappears days later. Connie explores the back-end mechanics of the store to learn why.

Cherry Ames, Department Store Nurse (Grossett & Dunlap, 1956) is one of 27 titles in the Cherry Ames Nurse Stories by Helen Wells and Julie Tatham. Cherry investigates missing jewelry and antiques in between dealing with lost children and handing out aspirin to employees of a large department store.

British author Katherine Woodfine has written four books so far about Sinclair’s Department Store, an Edwardian emporium in London. Miss Sophie Taylor and Miss Lilian Rose are the juvenile detectives. The first book in the series, The Clockwork Sparrow (Egmont Books, 2015), was nominated for multiple awards including the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2016.

The publication dates of these books illustrate the importance of department stores to society at the time they were written. That department stores are not common as a scene of crime now shows the focus of commerce has shifted to other settings.

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Lifelong reader Aubrey Nye Hamilton works as a systems engineer in R&D. In her other life she review newish books on Kevin’s Corner kevintipplescorner.blogspot.com, review olders mysteries on Happiness Is a Book happinessisabook.com, and writes occasional pieces for Mystery Readers Journal, mysteryreaders.org.

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My Not So Secret Love Affair: Guest Post by Jeffrey Siger

Thank you, Janet Rudolph, for inviting me to share with your Mystery Fanfare readers the essence of what’s driven me to set my fourteen-volume Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series amid the beauty, history, and wiles of Greece. 

It isn’t fame, it isn’t fortune. It is an irrepressible desire on my part to express through my novels why I, a non-Greek by birth, am so intensely drawn to share with the world the majesty of Greece as if it were my homeland, and the spirit of the Greek people as if they are my family.

Anyone who knows me understands that my heart and soul are Greek—even though my tongue can’t quite make the language transition…so much so that as I’ve often said, and many can attest, whenever I try to speak Greek, my friends rush into English to save their mother tongue. Thankfully, my inability to voice the words, has not held me back from chronicling the wonders and beauty of Greece and the ways and resilience of its people.

Without all I’ve learned from Greeks and fellow grecophiles I never would have discovered the true character of my protagonist, Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis, nor that of his vibrant supporting cast of good guys, bad guys, rich folk and poor, high society and not.

I owe sincere thanks to many for their candid contributions to the success of my series. They and their tales of customs, secrets, and intrigues inspired me in one way or another to reach this point in my career.

By now I think it’s obvious how much I appreciate the support Greeks have shown my novels, and the reciprocal obligation I feel to fairly present Greece and its resilient, creative, hardworking people to the world. Indeed, despite the many accolades my work has received, the greatest honor I ever received was when The New York Times Book Review selected me as Greece’s thriller-writer of record.

I say that because my overall goal as a writer has always been the same.  To explore issues confronting modern day Greece in a way that touches upon its ancient roots. And to do so honestly and with love for the land and its people.

The fourteen books I’ve written in my Kaldis series are not a record, but in retrospect they certainly validate the depth of desire that lingered within me for at least half a century. It was with me when as a child I found myself making up stories every night as I fell off to sleep.

And it was there with me in high school when as a freshman I thought I could make it as a writer … until I realized how unlikely I was to earn a living as a writer––leading me to become a lawyer.

That decision to practice law played a huge, unexpected role in my emergence as a creative writer. And by that I don’t mean that my many years as a lawyer taught me to be creative with the facts.  Rather, those years and experiences developed my style, my voice, taught me how to write clearly, concisely and convincingly – and to do so quickly.

The practice of law also taught me how to graciously accept and channel criticism, a vital skill for one to develop if as a writer you wish to survive critical analyses of your work by your editors, critics and reviewers.

Having said all that, I never imagined I’d find something that’s brought as much fun and joy to my life as does the time I spend with the Chief Inspector and his crew seeking to further entertain all the wonderful friends my wife Barbara and I have made through the writing life. 

I’ve come to accept that whatever honors have come my way do so in large measure because of one person…my protagonist Andreas Kaldis.  He and I have been through fourteen adventures together, all the while battling with each other over who gets to write them. It’s Andreas who insists on writing about life on the edge of societal change, then drags me into exploring family dynamics, ancient practices, political intrigues, the military, Orthodoxy, refugees, corruption, wild nightlife, vendettas, the business of bomba, preservationists versus developers, the impact of Artificial Intelligence, and on and on. 

The one thing we agree upon is no matter what the story line, the setting for each novel is always presented in keeping with the series’ longstanding international reputation for sharing Greece’s breathtaking beauty and unique lifestyles with the reader. 

So, here I am, more than 20 years into my writing gig, celebrating the series that’s brought plaudits for my work from so many I deeply respect in the mystery writing world.  All of that truly has me feeling blessed that the dream of the young boy I once was to someday become a writer came true.

But where to now, one might ask. Allow me to assure you that this is not a retirement speech…though with the latest title being NOT DEAD YET, it’s understandable how one might get that impression.  

Not only am I working on Kaldis #15, but I have a new book in an entirely different series coming out on February 3, 2026 ––A Study in Secrets, the debut novel in my The Redacted Man series. Plus, the folks with an option on TV/film rights to my Kaldis series say they’re close to making it all come together.
And did I mention that my entire Kaldis backlist, fitted with brand new B-2 format covers has just been re-released by my publisher Severn House and is available here:  https://jeffreysiger.com/books/

In other words, I’m still happily strolling along the road that’s led me from the Pittsburgh of my roots to a Manhattan legal career, and onto an ever-evolving love affair with Greece. 

Yiasas, y’all.

––Jeff

***

Jeffrey Siger fled his position as a name partner in his own NYC law firm to write Greece-based mystery thrillers on Mykonos. The New York Times picked him as Greece’s thriller novelist of record, Reader’s Digest Select Editions described him as among its “new favorite authors,” and the Greek National Tourism Organization recently honored him as “one of our country’s shining ambassadors to the world.” He’s received Lefty and Barry “Best Novel” nominations for his fourteen-book Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series, been Chair of Bouchercon, and served as an adjunct college professor teaching mystery writing.  www.jeffreysiger.com